Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday called Narendra Modi the world’s greatest actor and suggested that it would have been better had people made Amitabh Bachchan the Prime Minister instead.
“Ab aap samajh lijiye ke aapne duniya ke sabse bade abhineta ko apna PM bana diya hai. Iss se accha toh aap Amitabh Bachchan ko hi bana dete,” Priyanka said during a road show in Mirzapur, 260km south of Lucknow. “It is time you understood that you have made the world’s greatest actor the Prime Minister. It would have been better had you made Amitabh Bachchan the Prime Minister.”
Laughing, she added: “Karna toh kisi ne kuchh nahi tha aapke liye. ”
The comment marked a rare moment when a member of either the Gandhi family or the Bachchan household had referred to the other in public. The families had been close for decades before relations soured.
Jawaharlal Nehru held Amitabh’s father, the poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, in high esteem. Indira Gandhi and Amitabh’s mother Teji Bachchan were close friends, and later so were their sons Rajiv Gandhi and Amitabh. When Sonia arrived in India as Rajiv’s fiancée, she put up at the Bachchan residence and Teji acted as her godmother, familiarising her with the country’s culture.
After Indira’s assassination, Amitabh joined politics and was elected an MP on a Congress ticket from Allahabad in 1984.
However, bitterness is said to have crept in after Amitabh’s name got dragged into the Bofors scandal and the actor quit as an MP three years into his term.
Amitabh Bachchan The Telegraph file picture
As the years passed, the families drifted apart. Although the Gandhis and the Bachchans avoided referring to each other even in casual conversations, the acrimony spilled out in the open when Amitabh’s wife Jaya suggested that those who brought her husband into politics had “betrayed” him. Jaya by then had joined the Samajwadi Party.
Rahul Gandhi publicly denied that his family had ever betrayed anybody.
Amitabh had then said: “The Nehru-Gandhi family has ruled the country. Woh raja hai, hum runk hai (They are king and we commoners). If the king says he does not want to have a relationship, what can the poor do? The poor cannot afford to say that ‘we want to have relations with the king’.”
Amitabh, who has often faced criticism in the past few years for remaining silent on burning issues and not condemning atrocities, became brand ambassador of Gujarat when Narendra Modi was chief minister and is also a key participant in Prime Minister Modi’s Swachh Bharat campaign.
At Mirzapur, where Priyanka held the roadshow on Friday, the Congress has fielded Lalitesh Pati Tripathi against the sitting MP from BJP ally Apna Dal, Anupriya Patel. The SP-BSP alliance has nominated Ram Charitra Nishad.
During the road show, Priyanka shook hands with many people. She invited three children to the open-top truck in which she was campaigning and hugged them. The children later told reporters that Priyanka had asked them about their studies and what their parents did.
Priyanka held another road show in Kushinagar, 300km north of Mirzapur.
